Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 13.025 March 22, 2004 1) oyf'n hekhn barg (Haviva Langenauer) 2) Sutskevers "Fun vegn a royz" (Heather Valencia) 3) yidish-frantseyzish verterbukh (Heather Valencia) 4) Judendeutsch (Heather Valencia) 5) Yiddish speakers (Ruth Goodman) 6) The Vernadsky Archive (Vladimir Krasheninnikov) Visit Mendele on the Web: http://www.mendele.net 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: March 19, 2004 From: havival@bellsouth.net Subject: oyf'n hekhn barg My grandfather who came from Novograd Volinsk in the Ukraine used to chant a ditty that went like this: oyf'n hekhn barg oyf di grine groz shteyen a por daytshn mit de lange baytshn hekhe mener zaynen zey kirtse kleyder trogn zey ...... I know what it means. Surely there is some political significance to this ditty. Does this ring a bell for anyone? Haviva Langenauer 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: March 19, 2004 From: valencia@onetel.com Subject: Sutskevers "Fun vegn a royz" Vos sheyekh Sheve Tsukers frage: Sutskevers lid "Fun vegn a royz" gefint men af zayt 160 fun ershtn band "Poetishe verk". S'iz a bisl modne, az Seymour Mayne hot arayngenumen dos lid in zayn "Burnt Pearls. Ghetto Poems," vayl es iz geshribn gevorn in yor 1939, un tsum ershtn mol gedrukt gevorn in In zikh, Band 10, 1939 (ze Avrom Novershtern, Sutskever bibliografye, zaytl 37). Heather Valencia 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: March 19, 2004 From: valencia@onetel.com Subject: yidish-frantseyzish verterbukh In support of Moyse Taube's praise of the Niborski-Vaisbrot dictionary (Mendele 13.023) with respect to "matem zayn": I would just like to add my word here, in the spirit of Hugh Denman's plea that we should widely advertise important publications in Yiddish: even if one's French is poor or non-existent, this dictionary is _so excellent_ that it is worth while spending the money on a good French-English (or whatever) dictionary and going through the effort of double checking (and improving one's French in the process!). Heather Valencia 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: March 19, 2004 From: valencia@onetel.com Subject: Judendeutsch And from the sublime to the ridiculous: I have started reading Amos Elon's book about Jews in Germany, "The Pity of it all" (2002), which is very readable and seems very interesting: but unfortunately his comments about Yiddish in the first chapter makes one suspicious of the reliability of the whole work: "At the time of his arrival [in Berlin], Moses Mendelssohn knew only Hebrew and Judendeutsch, a raw medieval German dialect mixed with Hebrew. German suffixes attached to Hebrew verbs produced the infinitives; the limited, rudimentary vocabulary of Judendeutsch permitted only the simplest exchanges. On the rare occasions when it was written, Judendeutsch was spelled in Hebrew letters read from right to left". (p.3) Or am I making a mistake here, and he is not talking about Yiddish at all? Heather Valencia 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: March 21, 2004 From: RuthFG@aol.com Subject: Yiddish speakers Does anyone know how many Yiddish speakers there are in America? If not, where can I find the information. Thanks. Ruth Goodman 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: March 22, 2004 From: vlad_krash@ipnet.kiev.ua Subject: The Vernadsky Archive of Jewish Music Over the years 'Mendele' has from time to time touched on the subject of the extensive sound archive of Jewish musical folklore housed in Kiev in the Vernadsky National Library of the Ukraine. At the centre of this sound archive lie the An-ski expedition recordings made in Belarus, Volhynia and Podolia between 1912 and 1914 and the legendary Beregovski archive of recordings made in the Ukraine in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. Readers may be aware that in recent years two 'experimental' promotional CDs containing sample recordings taken from the archive have been in limited circulation. I wish to inform readers that these two CDs are now readily available on a normal commercial basis to anyone who wishes to purchase a copy. In addition to this, however, I wish to inform readers of a far more important development which will have long-term repercussions in the fields of Yiddish studies and of Jewish music. It has been decided to release the entire sound archive commercially on a series of CDs. In total the entire 'scientific edition' will comprise between 50 and 100 discs (at this stage it is impossible to be more accurate) and will be presented in accordance with the highest scholarly standards - the whole project is being carried out under the general supervision of Lyudmila Sholokhova who was formerly music librarian of the Jewish section of the Vernadsky Library and is currently working at the YIVO library in New York. The discs will be available not just to academic institutions and the like but to the general public as well. We estimate that it will take 5-7 years for the entire edition to be issued. All future discs will be released in the CD-Extra format and will have an anticipated average running time of around 40-50 minutes. In addition to the sound tracks, the discs will contain scans of all the music sheets and other archival documents relating to the recordings on the disc. Perhaps I should explain that CDs in the CD-Extra format are CDs that carry both sound and text/images. The sound tracks can be played back on a normal CD player or on a PC with a sound system. If they are played on a PC, you can also access the text and images. Each disc represents a mine of hitherto inaccessible source material recorded on location in the shtetls of Belarus, Volhynia, Podolia and elsewhere at a time when Yiddish was still a vibrant and thriving culture. The material about to be made available is absolutely unique and of immense musical, linguistic and historical interest. For example, from a musical point of view the complete CD edition will contain not only hundreds of field recordings of Yiddish folk and theatre songs, work songs, klezmer music and other items but also the most extensive collection of recordings of Hasidic melodies ever put together and, what is more, recorded in the very heartland of Hasidism. The first two discs in the new series are devoted to recordings made in Belarus and the Ukraine by the folklorist Zinovy Kisselgoff between 1913 and 1935 and will be available very shortly - probably within the next 2 - 3 weeks. In this particular instance the running time is about 90 minutes spread over two discs. The first disc contains about 35 minutes of cantorial music together with 60 music sheets, while the second disc has a running time of 55 minutes and contains recordings of wedding and other ceremonial music and children's songs. Each disc will cost $34 (including postage and packing) and may be ordered by contacting me by e-mail, fax or phone (see details below). Payment is either by bank transfer or, alternatively, via the 'iKobo' money transfer system (see the company's website at http://www.ikobo.com/ ). This payment system has been in operation for several months now and is working very well, but if it can be improved on, then all the better. Ease of payment is an absolutely crucial issue in this enterprise and if any reader can suggest to me other payment methods which may be preferable, I would be extremely grateful. Finally, I would like to stress one point and once more ask for readers' assistance. This whole project of issuing the sound archive on CD is entirely dependent on the sale of the CDs. As you can imagine, this is an enormous undertaking and involves a host of engineers, scientists and archivists. In addition, in order to make the sound transfers from the delicate Edison wax cylinders onto the digital media a special laser stylus had to be invented (the first of its kind in the world). All this has to be financed from sales of the discs. The success of the project will depend wholly on the response of the public and I would beg all Mendelyaners to contact anyone who they think may be interested in this project and pass on the information contained in this message. vladimir_krash@ipnet.kiev.ua Fax: +380-44 463-04-60 Phone: +380-50 310-33-87 Vladimir Krasheninnikov ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 13.025 Address for the postings to Mendele: mendele@lists.yale.edu Address for the list commands: listproc@lists.yale.edu